Canada and global warming: a state of denial 2

As I noted in the last post the Trudeau Liberal government's own documents, show that it has every intention of greatly increasing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels right through 2050, both for oil and natural gas, well above current levels as the graphs from the government's own Canada Engery Regulator show.  

Since fossil fuels are by far the largest source of emissions in Canada, this gives the lie to the Liberals claim that they will cut emissions by 40% t0 45% by 2030, let alone achieve zero emissions by 2050. In the next post I will back up this point with an examination of what this means for Canada both  internally and externally through the export of fossil fuels. The graphs below are from the Canada Energy Regulator, part of the Trudeau government. The The dark dotted lines of the graphs clearly show that both total oil and  total natural gas production climbing steadily upward until 2040 and then levelling off at a very high level. 

Crude oil production in the Evolving Scenario grows from 4.9 MMb/d in 2019 to 5.8 MMb/d in 2039. In the last decade of the projection, production begins to decline, reaching 5.3 MMb/d by 2050. Growth is largely due to expansions of existing in situ oil sands projects. The price assumptions in EF2020 underpin this growth. The Evolving Scenario assumes that the Brent crude oil price increases from 2019 US$37/bbl in 2020 and plateaus at the 2019 US$55/bbl level from 2026 to 2038, before declining slowly to 2019 US$50/bbl by 2050.

Natural gas production increases in the Evolving Scenario from 15.7 Bcf/d in 2019 to 18.4 Bcf/d in 2040. This growth is driven by increasing LNG exports, which we assume increase to 4.9 Bcf/d by 2039. Most of this production growth comes from the Montney tight gas resource, especially in British Columbia (B.C.). After 2040, natural gas production slowly declines to 16.8 Bcf/d by 2050.

Figure R.7: Total Crude Oil Production Peaks in 2039 and then Declines through 2050 in the Evolving Scenario

Figure R.13: Total Natural Gas Production Peaks in 2040 in the Evolving Scenario and Increases in the Long Term in the Reference Scenario

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/canada-energy-future/2020/res...

The following Guardian article discusses how you can spot greenwash by politicians BSing about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Since the author is British, he primarily uses British examples but also includes Trudeau as another example of BS greenwashing. He also calls out Mark Carney, former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor and just introduced as the new Liberal, darling at their convention this month for his BS over claiming the the investment company he vice-chairs was "net zero".

Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau: Two examples of climate change BSers. Photographer: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP Photo

So it’s goodbye climate deniers, hello — and you’ll pardon me for being blunt here — climate bullshitters.

The impacts of the climate emergency are now so obvious, only the truly deluded still deny them. Instead, we are at the point where everyone agrees something must be done, but many are making only vague, distant promises of ineffective action. As a result, we are currently on track for a 0.5 per cent cut in global emissions from 2010 levels by 2030, when a 45 per cent drop is needed to avoid climate catastrophe.

So how to spot this greenwash? A good rule of thumb is whether the proposal actually cuts emissions, by a significant amount, and soon, and whether the proposer is in fact making the climate emergency worse elsewhere.

Let’s start at the top, with the world’s governments, which have been setting out more targets than an archery competition. The global leader is the U.K., which recently pledged a world-beating emissions cut of 78 per cent by 2035. Targets are a necessary first step, but need action to be met and the instant, universal response: “Show me the policies!”

The problem is some actual U.K. policies are pushing emissions up, not down: massive road building, a scrapped home energy efficiency program and slashed electric car incentives, new oil and gas exploration, a failure to halt airport expansions and block a new coalmine (instead, the government belatedly ordered a public inquiry). ...

But it is not just Boris Johnson’s government that says one thing while doing another. All are talking tough on climate, but China is building one large coal-fired power station a week, Japan remains one of the biggest financiers of overseas coal plants and Norway is developing giant new oil and gas fields.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says climate change is an “existential threat,” yet the country’s emissions have actually increased since the 2015 Paris deal, thanks to its tarsands exploitation. Oh, and many nations still subsidize fossil fuels, which is like buying more cigarettes when you’re trying to quit smoking.

The world’s forests are suffering because of the same doublespeak. Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Peru and Colombia all pledged in 2014 to end deforestation by 2030. Yet in official carbon-cutting pledges submitted to the UN since then, none have confirmed that commitment.

Companies are, if anything, even better bullshitters than governments, and the fossil fuel giants are masters. Many are still exploring for new reserves, when we already have more than can ever be safely burned.

Chevron touts capturing CO2 emissions and storing them underground as a solution — one that of course enables the continued burning of its products. But its plans for carbon capture and storage cover less than one per cent of its 2019 carbon emissions. ExxonMobil wants public money to help with its carbon capture project to store 50 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030. That’s just eight per cent of the 2020 emissions its products resulted in.

Another technological fix promoted is hydrogen, in theory a clean fuel when generated using renewable energy. But its most enthusiastic backers are incumbent fossil fuel companies. Members of the global Hydrogen Council include Saudi Aramco, BP and Total, while the U.K. parliament’s hydrogen group is funded by Shell and gas network and boiler-making firms.

Why? Because hydrogen is a way for oil companies to move towards green energy without giving up fossil fuels. Pierre-Etienne Franc, co-secretary of the Hydrogen Council until 2020, explained: “It’s a way to avoid having stranded assets from the current fossil fuel-based system.”

Heating homes currently produces 14 per cent of U.K. carbon emissions and finding a green alternative is a major challenge. But hydrogen is a “very poor solution,” says one clean energy expert, Michael Liebreich, and should only be considered for heavy industry, and perhaps aviation and shipping, sectors where using electricity directly or via batteries is near impossible. ...

Next up, big banks — their financing of fossil fuels was bigger in 2020 than in 2016 or 2017, after the Paris climate deal. Top of the pile is JPMorgan Chase, despite it launching a “Paris-aligned financing strategy” and “aiming to finance and facilitate” $1 trillion in green initiatives by 2030.

Barclays and BNP Paribas both became founding members of the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance last month, yet both are in the top 10 financiers of fossil fuelssince 2015. Over at BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor and a company that says climate change is a “global threat,” its “Carbon Transition Readiness” fund includes Chevron, ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel giants.

Now let’s turn to carbon offsets, which many companies proffer as a way to claim future climate neutrality. An alarm bell should already be ringing when long-term climate-change skeptic Nigel Farage is getting into the offset business.

Offsets sound good in theory, but too often are fantasy accounting. Planting trees is a popular idea, but even if every possible new tree on the planet took root and started sucking up carbon, they would still be overwhelmed by fossil fuel emissions. ...

Even UN climate finance envoy and former Bank of England governor Mark Carneyrecently tripped up over offsets. He claimed that the investment company he vice-chairs was “net zero” despite investing in fossil fuels because the company also invested in renewable energy. Some called that an “accounting trick.” I call it a pile of rubbish.

Aviation companies are also prime purveyors of green guff. Ryanair boasted before the pandemic that its CO2 per passenger kilometre was the lowest in Europe, neglecting to mention that its growth in passengers meant its total emissions were rising.

Unless actions by governments and corporations cut emissions in the here and now, a dose of skepticism is in order, writes @dpcarrington. #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/06/difference-real-cl...

In a CBC podcast researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes discussed how ExxonMobil used language to make individuals feel responsible for climate change, similar to the strategy used by tobacco companies in the past. Here is the url for the podcast:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-429-what-on-earth/clip/15843325-f...

ClimateTruth.org

I have summarized some of their main points in this podcast. In their 2021 research, Supran and Oreskes found that Exxon used the word 'risk' once in 187 public documents as they followed a public strategy of denying climate change existed in the twentieth century, copying the approach developed by the cigarette industry. However, from 2000 onward, as the evidence that climate change was real piled up Exxon made 'risk' more than any other word, as in there is a risk from climate change to avoid having to say climate change is a reality, thereby shifting from a denial to a raising doubt strategy. They spent hundreds of millions to bring about semantic infiltration, which involves  undermining one’s own position in negotiations by adopting unknowingly the terms which the adversary “infiltrates.” For example climate change replaces global warming to mask the heating effect. By using words such as consumption, need, and demand in the ads the emphasis is shifted from the fossil fuel producers to the consumers being the problem. BP created the term "carbon footprint" to again shift the focus from them as a producer to the consumer, making the fossil fuel corporations the innocent providers of what the consumer wants, just as the cigarette companies shifted blame for lung cancer to smokers in their ads and response to government. The fossil fuel corporations continually speak of energy, rather than fossil fuels, making out that they are therefore the solution to your energy problems and therefore the good guys, innovating to make things better for you. They also scaremonger, by suggesting that if we address climate change we are doomed because we will destroy the economy, which depends on fossil fueels according to them, in the process and therefore destroy civilization. 

A recently published article in Nature, one of the top science journals, concluded that methane emissions from Canada's oil and natural gas fields are underestimated by a factor of 1.5. This is highly problematic because methane emissions capture solar energy and heat up the Earth by  a factor of 84 compared to carbon dioxide. 

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  These images taken by Earthworks demonstrate the need for stronger regulations for B.C.’s oil and gas industry. Liquids offloading at Tourmaline Doe HZ well site. (Photo: Earthworks)

Methane emissions were measured at 6650 sites across six major oil and gas producing regions in Canada to examine regional emission trends, and to derive an inventory estimate for Canada’s upstream oil and gas sector. Emissions varied by fluid type and geographic region, with the heavy oil region of Lloydminster ranking highest on both absolute and intensity-based scales. Emission intensities varied widely for natural gas production, where older, low-producing developments such as Medicine Hat, Alberta showed high emission intensities, and newer developments in Montney, British Columbia showed emission intensities that are amongst the lowest in North America. 

Overall, we estimate that the Canadian upstream oil and gas methane inventory is underestimated by a factor of 1.5, which is consistent with previous studies of individual regions.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-87610-3#:~:text=Overall%2C%20...

Cutting methane emissions is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Methane emissions as a fraction of total emissions have been growing steadily, especially in Canada. m Although carbon dioxide emissions have to cut too,reducing  methane emissions would be easier to do and less costly than carbon dioxide emissions, allowing it to reduced faster, according to a recent report.

Intentional and unintentional leaks of methane from fossil fuel drilling sites in Canada and around the world have contributed to the rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Photo by Ken Doerr / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Slashing methane emissions is vital to tackling the climate crisis and rapidly curbing the extreme weather already hitting people across the world today, according to a new UN report.

In 2020 there was a record rise in the amount of the powerful greenhouse gasemitted by the fossil fuel industry, cattle and rotting waste. Cutting it is the strongest action available to slow global heating in the near term, Inger Andersen, the UN’s environment chief, said.

The report found that methane emissions could be almost halved by 2030 using existing technology and at reasonable cost. A significant proportion of the actions would actually make money, such as capturing methane gas leaks at fossil fuel sites.

Achieving the cuts would avoid nearly 0.3C of global heating by 2045 and keep the world on track for the Paris climate agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C. Methane cuts also immediately reduce air pollution and would prevent many premature deaths and lost crops.

Methane is 84 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and has caused about 30% of global heating to date. But it breaks down in the atmosphere within about a decade, unlike CO2, which remains in the air for centuries.

Cutting carbon emissions remains essential in ending the climate emergency, but some experts liken reducing CO2 in the air to the slow process of stopping a supertanker, whereas lowering methane is like cutting the engine on a speedboat and bringing it to a rapid halt. ...

“Methane emissions are increasing faster now than at any time in nearly 40 years of the observational record,” he said. “Despite Covid … methane shot upwards – it’s going in the wrong direction very, very rapidly.” ...

The report found feasible and cost-effective methane cuts of 60% could be made from fossil fuel operations by stopping the venting of unwanted gas and properly sealing equipment. Waste sites could cut about 35% by reducing the organic waste sent to landfill sites and through better sewage treatment.

The estimated methane cuts from agriculture by 2030 were lower at 25%. “You can change the feed to cows and the way you manage the herds, but these things are fairly small,” said Shindell. “You could make very great inroads into methane emissions by dietary change [eating less meat], but we are just not that sure how quickly that will happen.”

Other measures not specifically targeting methane can still cut emissions of the gas, the report said, such as reducing the demand for fossil gas by increasing renewable energy and energy efficiency, and wasting less food.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/06/cut-methane-emission...

Canada's largest fossil fuel lobby group, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), is pushing to get the Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, involved in deciding greenhouse emission reduction targets so that there would be focus on economic targets, as well as environmental. The fossil fuel sector produces more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. 

While there has been a growing global shift away from fossil fuels, the Trudeau government, as noted in the last post continues to push for its further development. Bringing an even greater focus on economic interests when it comes to the fossil fuel industry through the Finance Minister laying in on them, can only be more detrimental to achieving significant emissions reductions. 

A senior executive from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) told the House of Commons environment committee that Bill C-12, the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, should be amended so that other members of cabinet, in particular Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, share in that responsibility.

“We don’t think it is appropriate for that all to rest with one minister,” CAPP’s vice-president of government relations and Indigenous affairs Shannon Joseph told the committee Wednesday during its study of the bill.

Joseph also said Bill C-12 should require what she called “economic targets,” in addition to its designated purpose of mandating targets for pollution cuts. She warned there would be “public resistance” to the bill if the government ignored the economic outcomes of its climate goals.

“I think it’s absolutely critical for us to have an economic lens on the way we pursue net-zero and what it costs, what it changes for affordability of all aspects of the economy,” she said. “It is important for people, it is important for businesses, and it needs to be part of how we assess the pathways that we’re on.” 

CAPP’s member businesses represent roughly four-fifths of the oil and gas produced in the country, and include large Canadian oilpatch producers as well as smaller players and other companies offering services to the industry. 

The oil and gas sector represents over a quarter of all carbon pollution generated in Canada, the largest share of all economic sectors, according to the government’s most recent emissions report to the United Nations. Carbon pollution from the oil and gas sector increased by 89 million tonnes between 1990 and 2019. ...

Scientists say emissions need to be cut by 45 per cent by 2030 to avoid more extreme climate consequences. That means fossil fuel production must drop by six per cent per year for the next decade. Achieving net-zero by 2050 means there is “no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply,” the International Energy Agency said this week.

This reality means that financial portfolios and endowments around the world are increasingly committing to abandoning their fossil fuel investments — to the tune of nearly US$15 trillion so far, according to research by BlackRock. ...

“If we are to talk about economics in general, I think we can’t hide the fact that there is huge divestment happening from the fossil fuel sector,” David Suzuki Foundation director general for Quebec and Atlantic Canada, Sabaa Khan, told the committee after Joseph spoke.  “If we’re thinking about the economy we have to face the fact that the fossil fuel sector is in decline. Fossil fuel companies are investing in renewable energy — out of goodwill? Or do they see that decarbonization is inevitable?” ...

The United Kingdom’s 2008 Climate Change Act, for example, led to long-term stability in terms of renewables investment, argued Khan, unlocking capital that may not have been as accessible if the country had not restricted its carbon on a budget. 

The comments on the net-zero legislation by CAPP stood in contrast to those made by other witnesses on Wednesday that were largely focused on strengthening the bill’s accountability and transparency measures. 

Climate Action Network Canada, West Coast Environmental Law, Equiterre and Ecojustice submitted a joint brief to the committee that called Bill C-12 “a tentative step in the right direction,” but “too weak in its current form.” ...

Among other recommendations the groups want to see: progress reports starting in 2023; emissions milestones starting in 2025; milestones set 10 years in advance; plans to achieve targets requiring “detailed information and modelling” on federal and provincial measures; and the minister or cabinet ensuring that emissions targets are actually met.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/05/21/news/oil-lobby-wants-finance...

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https://sustainabilityillustrated.com/en/2019/03/12/petroleum-history-co...

Mainstream economists have been a major factor in delaying the world's response to the ever growing evidence, like the melting icebergs and rising sea levels apparent in the picture below, of the damage done by global warming according to , Steve Keen, a fellow at University College London’s Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security. By ignoring the warnings of what was coming we are now facing the equivalent of having to pour massive resources into the fight against climate change as if we were entering a major war that were totally unprepared for. 

As my 20 year old son says, if we had started as late as 1980 decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 2% a year we would already be more than 80% of the way towards eliminating fossil fuel emissions. Instead, mainstream economists, like the politicians they advised, ignored the problem.

 

Icebergs near Ilulissat, Greenland. Climate change is having a profound effect in Greenland with glaciers and the Greenland ice cap retreating.

Economic forecasts predicting the potential impact of climate change have grossly underestimated the reality and delayed global recovery efforts by decades, according to a leading professor.

Mainstream economists “deliberately and completely” ignored scientific data and instead “made up their own numbers” to suit their market models, Steve Keen, a fellow at University College London’s Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security, told CNBC on Friday.

Now, a “war-level footing” is required to have any hope of repairing the damage, he said.

“Fundamentally, the economists have totally misrepresented the science and ignored it where it contradicts their bias that climate change is not a big deal because, in their opinion, capitalism can handle anything,” Keen told “Street Signs Asia.”

Keen said the repercussions of climate change were foretold in the 1972 publication “The Limits to Growth” — a divisive report on the destructive consequences of global expansion — but economists then and since failed to heed its warnings, preferring instead to rely on market mechanisms.

“If their warnings had been taken seriously and we’d done as they’d suggested, changing our trajectory from 1975 on, we could have done it gradually using things like carbon tax and so on,” he said. “Because economists have delayed it by another half century, we are, as a species, putting three to four times the pressure on the biosphere.” ...

As a result, he said, “the only way we can (reverse) this is effectively a war level footing of motive mobilisation to reverse the amount of carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere to drastically reduce our consumption.”

Referring specifically to a report produced by economists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was instrumental in outlining global climate targets including those presented at the Paris Agreement COP21, Keen said even their most severe estimates were a “trivial underestimate of the damage we expect.”

That is because they “completely and deliberately ignore the possibility of tipping points,” a point at which climate change can cause irreversible shifts in the environment.

“I think we should throw the economists completely out of this discussion and sit the politicians down with the scientists and say these are the potential outcomes of that much of a change to the biosphere; we are toying with forces far in excess of ones we can actually address,” he said.

Keen’s comments come as world leaders wrapped up their final day of meetings at the Arctic Council — an intergovernmental forum covering wide-ranging geopolitical issues from climate to trade.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/war-footing-needed-to-correct-economists...

A small investor, called Engine No. 1, that is demanding Exxon Mobil have a better plan for fighting climate change has managed to win two seats on the board of through a proxy fight, thereby embarassing the corporation. It's own shareholders are demanding change when it comes to climate change. 

The victory for Engine No. 1 is an embarrassment for Exxon, unprecedented in the rarefied world of Big Oil, and a sign that institutional investors are increasingly willing to force corporate America to tackle climate change [File: Bloomberg]

A first-time activist investor with a tiny stake in Exxon Mobil Corp. scored a historic win in its proxy fight with the oil giant, signaling the growing importance of climate change to investors.

Engine No. 1 – the little-known firm that vaulted into the spotlight in December when it began pressing Exxon to come up with a better plan to fight global warming – won two seats on the company’s board at Wednesday’s annual shareholders meeting, according to a preliminary tally. ...

The result is an embarrassment for Exxon, unprecedented in the rarefied world of Big Oil, and a sign that institutional investors are increasingly willing to force corporate America to tackle climate change. That Engine No. 1, with just a 0.02% stake and no history of activism in oil and gas, could win even a partial victory against a titan like Exxon, the Western world’s biggest crude producer, shows how seriously environmental concerns are now being taken in the boardrooms of the country’s largest companies.

The vote is also striking because of the force with which Exxon battled the activist, which also criticized the company for its lackluster financial performance. Exxon refused to to meet with the nominees and Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods told shareholders earlier this month that voting for them would “derail our progress and jeopardize your dividend.” The company even went as far as to pledge, just 48 hours before the meeting, that it will add two new directors, including one with “climate experience.”

In other corners of the commodities sector, shareholders this year have already shown frustration with executives’ reluctance to embrace tough environmental goals. DuPont de Nemours Inc. suffered an 81% vote against management on plastic-pollution disclosures, while ConocoPhillips lost a contest on adopting more stringent emission targets.

The Exxon vote result shows a clear dissatisfaction with Woods’ strategy, despite the stock’s almighty rally this year, up more than 40% due to surging oil prices.

Woods should be able to continue improving Exxon’s financial performance as cash flows recover, securing the S&P 500’s third-largest dividend and leaving behind 2020’s record loss, the first in four decades. But the bigger question concerns Exxon’s energy transition strategy, considered by many shareholders to be well behind its European peers.

Exxon’s environmental record and unwillingness to embrace the transition to cleaner energy quickly enough was a key criticism in the six-month old proxy campaign. San Francisco-based Engine No. 1 was scathing in its assessment of Exxon’s long-term financial performance, calling it “a decade of value destruction.”

Rather than pivot toward low-carbon fuels and selling power like its some of its rivals, Exxon is betting heavily on carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that it says needs substantial government support to be viable.

Engine No. 1 said Exxon’s marquee CCS hub in Houston “lacks any real substance” and generated nothing more than an “advertising blitz.” The fund also said Exxon’s climate targets were “distorting its long-term emissions trajectory” and its claim of being aligned with the Paris Agreement “fails the basic test of logic.”

It remains to be seen how Exxon pivots, if at all, but the message from shareholders is clear: The status quo cannot continue.​

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/5/26/exxon-investor-scores-histor...

The evidence for climate change's link and human beings' willingness to ignore the evidence actually goes all the way back to the 1820s.

Joseph Fourier

In the 19th century, scientists realized that gases in the atmosphere cause a "greenhouse effect" which affects the planet's temperature. These scientists were interested chiefly in the possibility that a lower level of carbon dioxide gas might explain the ice ages of the distant past. At the turn of the century, Svante Arrhenius calculated that emissions from human industry might someday bring a global warming. Other scientists dismissed his idea as faulty. In 1938, G.S. Callendar argued that the level of carbon dioxide was climbing and raising global temperature, but most scientists found his arguments implausible. It was almost by chance that a few researchers in the 1950s discovered that global warming truly was possible. In the early 1960s, C.D. Keeling measured the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: it was rising fast. Researchers began to take an interest, struggling to understand how the level of carbon dioxide had changed in the past, and how the level was influenced by chemical and biological forces. They found that the gas plays a crucial role in climate change, so that the rising level could gravely affect our future.

 

 Beginning with work by Joseph Fourier in the 1820s, scientists had understood that gases in the atmosphere might trap the heat received from the Sun. As Fourier put it, energy in the form of visible light from the Sun easily penetrates the atmosphere to reach the surface and heat it up, but heat cannot so easily escape back into space. For the air absorbs invisible heat rays (“infrared radiation”) rising from the surface. The warmed air radiates some of the energy back down to the surface, helping it stay warm. This was the effect that would later be called, by an inaccurate analogy, the "greenhouse effect." The equations and data available to 19th-century scientists were far too poor to allow an accurate calculation. Yet the physics was straightforward enough to show that a bare, airless rock at the Earth's distance from the Sun should be far colder than the Earth actually is.

https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm

 

John Tyndall discovered the greenhouse effect in 1859

John Tyndall set out to find whether there was in fact any gas in the atmosphere that could trap heat rays. In 1859, his careful laboratory work identified several gases that did just that. The most important was simple water vapor (H2O). Also effective were carbon dioxide (CO2), although in the atmosphere the gas is only a few parts in ten thousand, and the even rarer methane (CH4). Just as a sheet of paper will block more light than an entire pool of clear water, so a trace of CO2 or CH4 could strongly affect the transmission of heat radiation through the atmospheree. 

https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm#S1

Having failed to deal with global warming for more than a century, the Suzuki Foundation warns that our road map for dealing with it now and in the coming years will be very difficult. However, as the picture belows implies, we are watching the sunset of the fossil fuel industry. However, through the $15 billion in subsidies to the fossil fuel companies, the $18 billion Trans Mountain pipeline and purchase and constrution costs, the granting of new oil field exploration permits for offshore Newfoundland oil that have resulted in two wells showing an new oil field etcetera, the Trudeau government pushes fossil fuel development at the same time it declares a climate change emergency.

The question is whether it will also be the sunset of civilization.

Thirty-three years ago, NASA scientist James Hansen told a U.S. congressional committee the agency was 99 per cent certain a global warming trend was not natural, but caused by a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuels.

"Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming," Hansen said, adding, "It is already happening now."

George Woodwell, director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, testified that wide-scale forest destruction would speed the warming, as dying forests release stored carbon dioxide.

It's shocking that so many people decided the best course would be to shrug and carry on as usual in the face of dire, compelling statements from scientists who thoroughly examined the problem -- not to mention evidence building since Joseph Fourier's discoveries in the 1820s to a U.S. National Academy of Sciences report in 1977 and congressional hearings on climate in the early 1980s held by Rep. Al Gore (later senator, then vice-president). There was talk but little action.

Now all those warnings are reality: rapidly escalating temperatures, rising sea levels, increasing extreme weather events and more. More than 30 years after Hansen's testimony, we're in crisis because industry and governments failed to act. ...

A new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) notes that a growing number of governments worldwide are pledging to zero out emissions over the coming decades. "But the pledges by governments to date -- even if fully achieved -- fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C."

One silver lining in "Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector" is its finding that reducing, capturing and neutralizing emissions will benefit human prosperity and well-being beyond simply slowing global heating -- although it warns the path "is narrow and requires an unprecedented transformation of how energy is produced, transported and used globally."

Following recommendations from the report's "more than 400 milestones" would create "millions of jobs in clean energy, including energy efficiency, as well as in the engineering, manufacturing and construction industries," an IEA release said. The report stresses governments must minimize hardships for people and communities affected by the energy transition, with regional aid, retraining and locating clean energy infrastructure near affected communities to maintain jobs.

Measures such as providing electricity and clean cooking solutions to those who lack them would bring major health benefits by cutting pollution and could prevent 2.5 million premature deaths a year.

But it means getting off fossil fuels -- quickly. Unwillingness to start the transition when we first became aware of the need means we have no time left to lose. The report finds fossil-fuel use must fall from four-fifths of energy supply today to around one-fifth in 2050, and that demand will continue to plummet. There's no place for new coal, oil or gas development, including pipelines. Remaining fossil fuels must be "used in goods where the carbon is embodied in the product such as plastics, in facilities fitted with carbon capture, and in sectors where low-emissions technology options are scarce."

The immediate goals are to rapidly phase out coal power and internal combustion engine vehicles and halt new oil and gas development.

The report notes most CO2 reductions through to 2030 can be made using available technologies but that "in 2050, almost half the reductions come from technologies that are currently at the demonstration or prototype phase." Electricity must "play a key role across all sectors, from transport and buildings to industry."

The road map shows that by 2050, 90 per cent of global electricity generation could come from renewable sources, 70 per cent from solar photovoltaic and wind. A David Suzuki Foundation study also foundgetting to net zero means electrifying just about everything: cars, buses, trucks, home and building heat pumps, industrial furnaces and more.

The era of coal, oil and gas is over.

https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2021/05/energy-road-map-ch...

A new study of 732 cities in 43 countries worldwide concludes that 37% of heat-induced deaths are the result of climate change. There is enormous variation in the percentages, but in some third world countries near the equator, such as Ecuador and Columbia, the percentage of climate change heat-induced deaths reaches as high as 76%. Even in a more northerly city like New York there is a significant impact in the number of deaths induced by climate change. The study also warns that situation is much worse than previously expected and will only get worse. 

 

In this Friday, June 26, 2015 file photo, mourners attend a funeral for unclaimed people who died of extreme weather, in Karachi, Pakistan, after a devastating heat wave. Photo by: Associated Press/Shakil Adil 

Over the last three decades, human-induced global warming has caused more than one-third of all heat-related deaths. The finding, published in Nature Climate Change, looked at deaths between 1991 and 2018 from 43 countries around the world. On average 37 percent of all deaths in which heat played a role are attributable to the effects of the climate crisis. ...

There is huge variation in terms of macro-regions and specific localities, with many places having much higher rates. The highest percentages where heat-related deaths were attributed to climate change were South America and Southeast Asia. In Ecuador and Colombia, for example, it was up to 76 percent. There Is also huge variation in major cities. Santiago de Chile and New York City experienced similar percentages, experiencing an additional 136 and 144 heat-related deaths per year.

Global warming affects human health in multiple ways. Making people more susceptible to getting ill and dying due to heat is just one of them. To differentiate the heat-related deaths due to climate change from other factors, the team looked at scenarios for weather conditions in which there has not been any anthropogenic global warming as well as how greenhouse emissions impacted the actual climate. Armed with that, the team was able to distinguish the extra impact that climate change has brought.  

"We expect the proportion of heat-related deaths to continue to grow if we don't do something about climate change or adapt. So far, the average global temperature has only increased by about 1°C, which is a fraction of what we could face if emissions continue to grow unchecked," lead author Dr Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera from the University of Bern said in a statement.

The study's findings suggest that the climate crisis is already affecting humanity more than realized, or acknowledged, and more ambition is required by global governments to mitigate global warming. Better public health measures also need to be put in place to minimize the increased risks that people are experiencing due to the anthropogenic climate crisis.

The study provides some important insights but the researchers acknowledge its limitation as it only included a small number of countries and had limited data on large areas of Africa and South Asia where the impact of the climate crisis has already been devastating in many other ways.

"This is the largest detection and attribution study on current health risks of climate change. The message is clear: climate change will not just have devastating impacts in the future, but every continent is already experiencing the dire consequences of human activities on our planet," senior author Professor Antonio Gasparrini from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said. "We must act now."

https://www.iflscience.com/environment/humaninduced-global-warming-cause...

Oil companies and corporatists like Bill Gates are looking to geoengineering as a solution as a solution to our global warming problems. Gates and Warren Buffett have ties to geoengineering and fossil fuel companies operating in the Alberta oil sands. 

Geoengineering is being fought by the indigenous Saami people of northern Scandinavia and the United States.  Of course, it would be a disaster, not only because it won't work, but because it would take our focus off what is essential - greatly reducing greenhouse gas emssions, which is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants. Fortunately, they have not got much traction, so far. 

The halo on Bill Gates has been noticeably slipping in recent months, and on March 31 it threatened to take a nosedive. That was the date Sweden's space agency acknowledged that it had cancelled and withdrawn from a solar geoengineering test in which Gates has a major stake. The test's ultimate goal is to dim the sun to counter the heat-trapping effects of carbon dioxide.

The first step in the project -- proposed by Harvard University researchers and largely funded by Gates -- had been scheduled to take place this month, but strong opposition from Sweden's Indigenous peoples and environmental groups stopped the test.

The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment -- SCoPEx for short -- is on hold for now, but its first phase intends to release various aerosols from a balloon-gondola rig 12 miles high. The particles would cover the equivalent of 11 football fields and test their ability to block the sun by mimicking a continuous volcanic eruption. Ultimately, the goal is to release tonnes of sulphur dioxide particles -- sulphates -- into the stratosphere to deflect sunlight and cool the Earth. ...

The June test would not have released any particles, and was intended only to test the rig's technologies. But the test site was to be Kiruna, near the Arctic Circle, which is the Saami people's homeland. 

The Saami Council sent a February 24 letter to the SCoPEx Advisory Committee opposing not only the experiment, but the entire premise of solar geoengineering. The letter was co-signed by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, Friends of the Earth Sweden, and Greenpeace Sweden.

Asa Larsson-Blind, the Saami Council's Swedish vice-president, explained:

"Solar geoengineering violates the worldview of the Saami people, and goes against the urgent action we need to transform to zero-carbon societies that are in harmony with nature. We welcome SSC's [Swedish space agency] decision to stop the balloon flight planned for Saami lands in Kiruna, but the existential risks of this geoengineering technology disqualify it from ever being advanced -- whether here or elsewhere."

Johanna Sandahl, president of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, said solar geoengineering has "the potential for extreme consequences that could alter hydrological cycles, disrupt monsoon patterns, and increase drought" across the planet.

Jim Thomas, research director at the Ottawa-based eco-justice ETC Group, says:

"This is at least the third time that SCoPEx has been halted on Indigenous territory. First in New Mexico, then Arizona and now Sweden. Other geoengineering schemes on Indigenous homelands in the Arctic and around the Pacific Rim have also met clear opposition." ...

The Saami and their allies also took aim at the Harvard-appointed advisory committee itself, stating:

"We find it remarkable that the project has gone so far as to establish an agreement with [the Swedish space agency] on test flying without, as we understand, having applied for any permits or entered into any dialogue with either the Swedish government, its authorities, the Swedish research community, Swedish civil society, or the Saami people, despite the controversial nature of SCoPEx …It is noteworthy that Harvard University considers it reasonable for a committee whose role it is to decide whether this controversial project should go ahead, to not have any representation from the intended host country, Sweden. Instead, the committee is composed of almost exclusively U.S. citizens and/or residents."

In August 2008, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates -- two of the richest men in the world -- took a surprise tour of the tar sands. Much of the business press made it seem as though this was just another celebrity tour of the region.

But in fact, both Buffett and Gates were already financially involved in the region. Buffett had been busily buying up shares in the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which since 2006 had been moving diluents -- diluting agents necessary for mixing with tar sands bitumen -- from U.S. refineries in the Gulf Coast, California and Kansas to the Canadian border where they are handed over to CN Rail for shipment to the tar sands. ...

For his part, Gates -- major shareholder in CN Rail since 2000 -- had been buying up more CN Rail shares and more railways in preparation for transporting oil-by-rail for export.

During their 2008 tar sands tour, Buffett and Gates were hosted by fellow billionaire N. Murray Edwards' tar sands company Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and they toured its $9.3-billion Horizon site north of Fort McMurray.

Later, both Edwards and Gates (and then Chevron) invested in a Calgary-based geoengineering company called Carbon Engineering, whose president and majority owner is David Keith. Carbon Engineering is developing an industrial-scale technology to trap carbon dioxide directly from the air and into a water-based solvent -- a process that the Washington Post described in 2012 as potentially using so much water that it would "be depriving 53 million people of water" annually. ...

In their October 2020 article entitled "The Sugar Daddy of Geoengineering," researchers Dru Jay and Silvia Ribeiro noted that "[g]eoengineering is the fossil fuel industry's final escape hatch -- its only chance to keep on extracting and burning" fossil fuels long into the future." They add that "Gates is not a disinterested observer" but holds a "very significant stake in the continued expansion of the fossil fuel industry." Jay and Ribeiro estimate that in 2019 alone, Gates received about US$190 million from CN's oil-by-rail exports, with his CN Rail shares worth more than $10 billion.

https://rabble.ca/news/2021/06/solar-geoengineering-threat-planet-not-so...

Here's more on the Line 3  pipeline protests aimed at stopping the Trudeau government's goal of doubling the pipeline's capacity to carry tarsands oil from Alberta to Manitoba, which is already completed, and onward to North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. 

 

People surround a person laying on a machine. A group of activists sit under a shade as two others sit locked to a piece of construction equipment at the pump station Monday.

For several years now, environmental and tribal groups battling the Line 3 oil pipeline have fought the project in front of state regulators, in the courts and on the streets.

They've dotted the route with resistance camps, and they've chained themselves to branches of banks with ties to the project.

Their opposition so far hasn't stopped the pipeline. Enbridge Energy says it is more than halfway through building the $4 billion project across northern Minnesota.

“To see people engaging in personal risk like this, and to see so many young people and folks of all walks of life, it's so beautiful and powerful,” said Tara Houska, founder of the Giniw Collective, one of dozens of groups that organized the week’s actions. “It's an incredible moment.”

The Indigenous-led, multiday event, called the Treaty People Gathering, began over the weekend and is expected to reach into the week, with prayer, marches and direct action. 

Organizers say they hope to draw attention to the fight against the pipeline that they argue will exacerbate climate change and threaten the waters of treaty lands in northern Minnesota.  Their goal is to push the Biden administration to stop the Line 3 project, as it did the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Without direct action, and people engaging in personal risk,” Houska said, “the pressure just isn't there.” ...

Enbridge is replacing its current Line 3 oil pipeline, which is corroding and requires extensive maintenance, with a new pipe along a different route across northern Minnesota that will be able to carry about twice as much oil as the current line. ...

This type of protest has several goals, she said. 

"One is to to shut it down to shut down work, which we've successfully done,” the woman said, “and to cost Enbridge time and money and to raise a lot of awareness about the urgency of stopping this pipeline and get as much attention drawn to it as we can."

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/06/08/line-3-opponents-occupy-enbridg...

In addition to Jason Kenney officially giving up the ghost today on the Keystone XL pipeline after blowing at least $1.3 billion on it in a futile effort to overcome Biden's refusal to allow its construction, the Trans Mountain pipeline is also facing major problems. Besides its exorbitant costs, starting with the gross overpayment of $4.4 billion by the Trudeau Liberal government for a Kinder Morgan pipeline the company wanted to abandon because it saw no way of making a profit from it, researchers "at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby recently published ... found the project could cost Canadians upwards of $18 billion ... concluded that Canadians will lose an estimated $11.9 billion from the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. " (https://www.burnabynow.com/local-news/trans-mountain-could-lose-119-bill...)

Last week, a fourth insurance compay backed out of insuring the pipeline even though the Canadian Energy Regulator promised to keep the insurance companies names from the public as Trans Mountain's problems continue to grow (https://www.burnabynow.com/local-news/trans-mountain-could-lose-119-bill...). Trans Mountain now admits it is having trouble finding insurers even as its insurance premiums grow. Trans Mountain is increasingly becoming a financial boondoggle, in addition to the environmental disaster in the offing. Trudeau's purchase is becoming a Frankenstein monster. 

The end of the article explains the major role indigenous people are playing in fighting Trans Mountain. 

Justin Trudeau tries to plug Trans Mountain financial losses

Following pressure from Indigenous and climate activists, Trans Mountain insurer Argo Group is slashing ties with the Crown corporation.

Argo Group’s decision to drop Trans Mountain comes on the heels of two other insurers, Munich Re and Talanx, refusing to insure the pipeline last June, and lead insurer Zurich Insurance Group severing ties in July. 

“This type of project is not currently within Argo's risk appetite,” Argo spokesperson David Snowden said in an email. Snowden confirmed Argo also considers the Trans Mountain Expansion project, which would carry 590,000 barrels a day from the oilsands to British Columbia, too risky but did not say why.

Argo was on the cusp of tremendous pressure from Washington, D.C.-headquartered non-profit Public Citizen. Late last month, climate campaign co-ordinator Elise Peterson-Trujillo wrote to Snowden with an ultimatum.

“As Argo Group has not yet made any such commitments to rule out Trans Mountain or tar sands more broadly, I am writing to let you know that you are currently on the list of targets for an upcoming week of action that is spotlighting the insurance backers of the Trans Mountain pipeline,” they wrote. ...

“If Argo publicly states — by June 4, 2021 — that it will rule out insurance services for the existing Trans Mountain pipeline and the pipeline expansion for 2021-2022 and in perpetuity thereafter, then we will ensure that you are no longer a target for the global week of action,” they added.

The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) recently gave Trans Mountain the go-ahead to shield its list of insurers from the public for this reason. Trans Mountain argued if it could not keep its insurers private going forward, “targeting and pressure” could result in a “material loss” to the company and “prejudice the competitive position of its insurers.”

Further, Trans Mountain warned in a letter to the CER that in 2020 it had a “significant reduction” in available insurance and paid “significantly higher” premiums to cover the gaps. In other words, there are fewer insurers willing to back the project, which could make it more difficult to secure the $1 billion worth of coverage, lines of credit, or cash on hand, it requires to operate. ...

West Coast Environmental Law staff lawyer Eugene Kung said there is a growing trend in the insurance industry to re-evaluate projects with significant environmental risk because the way the insurance business model works is breaking down.  “The insurance model is to use historical data and claims history to try to forecast and project forward and capture the risk that way,” Kung explained. “But when it comes to climate and climate-related incidents, what we're seeing, as was predicted, is that they're happening more frequently and more severely as time goes on.”

Kung said the strategy against fossil fuels isn’t to make it more expensive for companies by introducing risks, but rather for the longstanding risks to finally be recognized. “The fundamental part of this challenge is that oil and gas has been priced at the cost of extraction rather than the cost to society, that's at the crux of the climate crisis,” he said.

For Tiny House Warriors co-founder and Secwepemc and Ktunaxa land defender Kanahus Manuel, Argo cutting its ties with Trans Mountain is a relief. “When my father was alive he was really spearheading the resistance against the insurance companies, because we were all fighting and resisting in different ways,” she said. Manuel’s father is Arthur Manuel, the prominent Indigenous leader and activist who wrote The Reconciliation Manifesto and Unsettling Canada and started the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade organization. 

“He says when you go to these international bodies, you walk in like you're the owner of 180,000 square kilometres of land, because that's what you are,” she said.  That title to the land is “where the risk starts to come” in, because you’re changing an “outdated system” where “companies can come in and plow through Indigenous Peoples and their rights,” she said.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/06/04/news/trans-mountain-just-los...

The Alberta NDP is calling for an investigation into why the Kenney Alberta government poured $1.3 billion into the risky Keystone pipeline when they knew Biden promised to cancel it. 

Even more important is the statement  of the CEO of a Calgary-based energy-consulting firm, Duane Reid-Carlson, , recognizing the enormous problems the Alberta tarsands faces in finding customers: "What worries me more," the EDC Associated Ltd. CEO said, "is the ability for the oil and gas industries in Alberta to continue to expand with these kinds of headwinds. (It) really kind of spells doom and gloom for the economic prosperity and growth of Alberta," he added. "We can't get our products to market. You can't fight the U.S. government." 

Continuing to bet on fossil fuels not only makes on environmental sense, it makes no economic sense. 

Dutch boy Jason Kenney deals with global oil glut

Alberta's official opposition leader Rachel Notley is calling for an independent review of the Jason Kenney government's failed Keystone XL deal.

The Alberta NDP leader declared her intentions during a news conference on Thursday afternoon. "Jason Kenney's incompetence has cost Alberta taxpayers $1.3 billion, at least," said Notley. "He made an incredibly reckless gamble with Albertans money and he lost it."  

Notley's remarks come a day after Alberta's UCP government and energy infrastructure builder TC Energy officially terminated the Keystone XL pipeline deal. ... In March of last year, Alberta committed $7.5 billion to Keystone XL, a $1.5 billion investment and $6 billion in backstop loans.

https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/alberta-ndp-calling-for-independent-investig...

I've taken the question from the end of the article below concerning the doubling of the Line 3 pipeline capacity that Trudeau sanctioned from Alberta to Manitoba and onward to North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin that is now being blockaded by thousands of indigenous people and environmentalists and replaced Biden's name with Trudeau because both are involved in not moving fast enough to transition out of fossil fuels, but Biden is certainly doing more than Trudeau, who had the lowest G7 greenhouse emission reduction targets this year and who has promoted the building of the Trans Mountain, Keystone, Line 3, Line 5, Energy East and the exploration for a new oilfield off Newfoundland that this year has resulted in two test wells hitting oil. "How many water protectors have to be arrested before world leaders, Prime Minister Trudeau paramount among them, seriously commit to a rapid, just transition off of our addiction to fossil fuels? How dangerously high must the concentration of carbon dioxide rise in our shared atmosphere?"

Climate activists and Indigenous community members march in Solway, Minnesota. Photograph: Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty Images

Enbridge Line 3, a pipeline currently under construction, designed to carry almost one million barrels of tar sands oil daily from Canada into the U.S. Line 3's intended route passes through Indigenous lands in Northern Minnesota, crossing scores of rivers and streams, wetlands, and through wild rice beds.

Two hundred is the approximate number of water protectors arrested on June 7, during the largest act of nonviolent civil disobedience against Line 3 construction to date. An Indigenous women-led mobilization is now underway, reminiscent of the mass movement that opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline on unceded Lakota territory in 2016.

"It's a brand-new corridor through our prime territory of wild rice, our clam beds, our fish, all of our territory," Winona LaDuke, the renowned Anishinaabe activist and a leader in the fight against the pipeline, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. "We've stood and tried every process to stop this. Along with all of these other women water protectors and our tribes, we've spent seven years in the regulatory process…Now we've come to go stand, and thousands of people have come to join us."

The protests included a march of over 1,500 people to occupy the spot where Line 3 would cross the Mississippi River, very close to the famous river's headwaters. Downriver, 500 more water protectors marched on the pipeline's Twin Inlets pumping station. There, 24 activists locked themselves to heavy machinery, and another 24 locked themselves to a large motor boat on a trailer, blocking vehicle access to the site. As the hours passed, police, reportedly from 31 different jurisdictions, escalated tactics, eventually deploying a long-range acoustic device (LRAD) in an attempt to disrupt the civil disobedience. A federal customs and border patrol helicopter buzzed the protesters, kicking up sand and rocks amidst the lockdown.

"What you've got is a political, human rights and environmental crisis," LaDuke continued. "We have petitioned every federal agency, and so far we have had no response. It just seems that Joe Biden wants to see if a bunch of Indian people and older women are going to get hurt up in northern Minnesota before it's an important-enough issue for him to look at."

President Biden has the authority to block the Line 3 pipeline, so, in addition to occupying its construction path, water protectors are organizing a mass campaign to pressure the Biden administration.

Grassroots organizing works, as was demonstrated by the declaration Wednesday by TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, that it is formally abandoning its planned Keystone XL pipeline. Rescinding the permit for Keystone XL was one of Biden's first acts as president. ...

Water protectors continue to arrive at the Mississippi's headwaters. ...

How many water protectors have to be arrested before world leaders, President Biden paramount among them, seriously commit to a rapid, just transition off of our addiction to fossil fuels? How dangerously high must the concentration of carbon dioxide rise in our shared atmosphere?

https://rabble.ca/columnists/2021/06/numbers-dont-lie-counting-through-c...

A good friend of mine summed it up nicely: "2050 is not a deadline; it's an excuse".

A new report in the highly respected scientific journal Nature warns  of a pattern of conditions in which zombie fires are most likely to arise in the rapidly warming Arctic. These zombie fires burn in the peat and dead organic material underground and break out as the temperature rises in the spring and summer. This has already happened several times in Canada's north, as well as in Alaska. These fires are triply bad because they not only release carbon dioxide from vegetation burnt above ground, but from methane, which has 30 times the heat producing effect of carbon dioxide trapped underground, and from underground carbon dioxide frozen away for 10,000+ years in the tundra. 

And yet Trudeau keeps building more pipeline capacity through Trans Mountain, Line 3, Line 5, and Keystone until Biden nixed it, and subsidizing and approving the exploration for a new oilfield off Newfoundland that has already struck oil twice. 

“Overwintering” fires smolder under the snow, reigniting vegetation in the spring. New research shows the zombies may proliferate in a warmer world.

Each winter, as snow blankets Alaska and northern Canada, the wildfires of the summer extinguish, and calm prevails — at least on the surface. Beneath all that white serenity, some of those fires actually continue smoldering underground, chewing through carbon-rich peat, biding their time. When spring arrives and the chilly landscape defrosts, these “overwintering” fires pop up from below — that’s why scientists call them zombie fires.

Now, a new analysis in the journal Nature quantifies their extent for the first time, and shows what conditions are most likely to make the fires reanimate. Using satellite data and reports from the ground, researchers developed an algorithm that could detect where over a decade's worth of fires — dozens in total — burned in Alaska and Canada’s Northwest Territories, snowed over, and ignited again in the spring. 

Basically, they correlated burn scars with nearby areas where a new fire ignited later on. (They ruled out cases that could have coincided with a lightning storm, as well as ones close enough to people to have been caused by an accidental ignition.) They calculated that between 2002 and 2018, overwintering fires were responsible for 0.8 per cent of the total burned area in these lands. That sounds small, but one year stood out: 2008, when a single zombie fire was actually responsible for charring 38 per cent of the total burned area.

That kind of outbreak may be a sign of things to come in a rapidly warming Arctic. While 2008 was a notably bad year, it was no fluke. Instead, it was part of a pattern of conditions in which zombie fires are most likely to arise. “They appear more often after hot summers and large fires,” says earth systems scientist Rebecca Scholten of the research university VU Amsterdam, lead author on the new paper. “And indeed, that is something that we could show has increased over the last 40 years.” For example, the particularly active fire years of 2009 and 2015 in Alaska, and 2014 in the Northwest Territories, generated multiple overwintering fires the following spring.

Northern soils are loaded with peat, dead vegetation that’s essentially concentrated carbon. When a wildfire burns across an Arctic landscape, it also burns vertically through this soil. Long after the surface fire has exhausted the plant fuel, the peat fire continues to smolder under the dirt, moving deeper down and also marching laterally. ...

Then spring arrives and the ice retreats. These hot spots can flare up, seeking more vegetation to burn at the edges of the original burn scar. “Basically, right after the snow melts, we already have dry fuel available,” says Scholten. ...

Zombie fires are also terrible for the planet. When a fire burns through vegetation, it gives off lots of carbon dioxide. But when peat smolders, it produces mostly methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas. When that zombie fire reignites, it starts producing CO2 again. So this one weird phenomenon can produce lots of both kinds of greenhouse gases, which is doubly bad.

Make that triply bad. When this fire burns through peat, it’s releasing carbon that’s been locked away from the atmosphere for perhaps 10,000 years, where it couldn’t contribute to global heating. ...

That will only exacerbate the Arctic’s troubles; it’s warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and it’s greening — but not in a good way. The retreat of ice and the takeover of shrubs, grasses, and trees means there will soon be more ultra-dry fuel for wildfires to burn. As temperatures rise, peat is drying out more readily, making it easier to ignite with lightning strikes. And as this new research shows, a warmer summer produces more zombie fires that make trouble the following spring. All told, the north is burning like never before.

https://www.wired.com/story/a-zombie-fire-outbreak-may-be-growing-in-the...

A powerful heat wave is hitting the western US and Canada, along with drought conditions, raising questions about whether this is the new normal.

A roofer works on a new roof in a housing development while the sun beats down on him as the heat wave continues Thursday, June 17, 2021, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)  AP

Record daily highs were seen this week in parts of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and Utah. Phoenix, which is baking in some of the U.S. West’s hottest weather, hit a record-breaking 118 degrees (48 Celsius) Thursday.

The heat comes from a high pressure system over the West, a buckle in the jet stream winds that move across the U.S. and vast swaths of soil sucked dry by a historic drought, said Marvin Percha, a senior meteorologist for the agency in Phoenix. He and other scientists say the heat wave is unusual because it arrived earlier and is staying longer than in most years. But with such an early heat wave this year, “this could be the tip of the iceberg,” Williams said.

WHAT ROLES DO DROUGHT AND CLIMATE CHANGE PLAY? A two-decade-long dry spell that some scientists refer to as a “megadrought” has sucked the moisture out of the soil through much of the Western United States. Researchers said in a study published last year in the journal Science that man-made climate change tied to the emission of greenhouse gases can be blamed for about half of the historic drought.

Scientists studying the dry period that began in 2000 looked at a nine-state area from Oregon and Wyoming down through California and New Mexico. Only one other that began in 1575 was a bit larger. 

The hot weather can be tied to the drought drying out the landscape. Normally, some of the sun’s heat evaporates moisture in the soil, but scientists say the Western soil is so dry that instead that energy makes the air even warmer. “When the soil is wet, heat waves aren't so bad," said Williams, who has calculated that soil in the western half of the nation is the driest it has been since 1895. “But if it's dry, we are under extreme risk.” ...

Scientists say the wildfires that have erupted in recent days have been fed by the excessive heat across the region. Climate change contributes to the drought conditions and makes trees and shrubs more likely to catch fire. At least 14 new wildfires broke out this week in Montana and Wyoming. ...

IS THIS THE NEW NORMAL? A growing number of scientific studies are concluding that heat waves in some cases can be directly attributed to climate change, said Kristie L. Ebi, a professor at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington. That means the U.S. West and the rest of the world can expect more extreme heat waves in the future unless officials move to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, Ebi and other scientists say.

A study last month estimated the percent and number of heat deaths each year that can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It included about 200 U.S. cities and found more than 1,100 deaths a year from climate change-caused heat, representing about 35% of all heat deaths in the country.

“Climate change is harming us now,” Ebi said. “It’s a future problem, but it’s also a current problem.”

https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2021-06-17/explainer-whats-beh...

Thousands of activists are travelling from across the U.S. and Canada to protest the building of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline which the Trudeau Liberals approved to double its capacity as it runs from Alberta to the Manitoba border and on into Minnesota on indigenous land. 

Protest signs at Fire Light Camp, where Dawn Goodwin leads a four-day prayer ceremony. Photograph: Sheila Regan/The Guardian

As the sun set, more than a dozen young people carried a wooden bridge toward a narrow section of the Mississippi River. The bridge allowed the group to cross more easily from their camp to where the immense oil pipeline was being built on the other side.

They were cited for trespassing – but they had symbolically laid claim to the marshy landscape.

That same day, Dawn Goodwin’s voice was soft but forceful as she spoke into the camera: “I’m calling on you, Joe Biden, to uphold our treaties, because they are the supreme law of the land.” ...

Across the state, along the pipeline’s planned route of construction, activists have traveled from all over the country to do the same: many have locked themselves to construction equipment, and hundreds have been arrested. Goodwin’s preferred method of protest is arguably less physical – she was in the middle of leading a four-day prayer ceremony – but she hoped it would be no less effective to draw attention to the potential harm the pipeline represents.

“We’re done messing around with the process and trusting that the process is going to work, because in the end, it failed us,” she said. “What am I trusting instead? The power of the people, and the creator.”

The proposed Line 3 pipeline – which, if expanded, would move crude oil from Alberta in Canada through Minnesota to Wisconsin – has quickly become the biggest target of US environmental advocates. In addition to attracting protesters from around the country, it’s bringing attention to Biden’s unfulfilled promises so far on the climate crisis, as advocates argue he could step in to stop an expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure but hasn’t. The US already produces more oil than it can use, and is increasing exports of oil and natural gas, despite vowing to cut its own climate pollution. ...

“For all of the reasons that Keystone XL was shuttered and more, Line 3 needs to be stopped as well,” said Collin Rees, a senior campaigner for Oil Change International. “There’s an increasing understanding that we can’t continue to expand fossil fuels.”

If the pipeline moves forward, Rees said, the Biden administration will be undermining its own authority at international climate negotiations. Other countries – including Denmark, Ireland, and Spain – are moving to ban future licenses for oil and gas drilling. ...

The 52-year-old pipeline, operated by the Canadian energy company Enbridge, is being replaced because it is deteriorating. Two other Enbridge pipelines have experienced major spills. But the replacement line is on an entirely new route, one that crosses rivers, lakes and wetlands. ...

Since December, protesters have been camping, praying, and holding space. But they’ve also gone to greater extremes: Johnny Barber locked his neck to an Enbridge gate in March a statement against the pipeline.

He was inspired by Standing Rock, a Native-led movement in resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline, centered in water protector camps set up near where the pipeline was being constructed. Founded on tenets of Native sovereignty and cultural preservation as well as environmental concerns, it drew allies from all over the world.

“Standing Rock was a watershed moment in the fight to stop these pipelines,” Barber said. ...

In the first week of June, more Line 3 protesters from around the country swarmed northern Minnesota. By 7 June, about 200 people had been arrested. About 2,000 environmental advocates arrived at the White Earth Reservation a day earlier for three days of training, according to the Treaty People Gathering. Keya Chatterjee, the head of the US Climate Action Network, said the non-profit’s policy arm brought three busloads of people from Seattle, Spokane and North Carolina to participate. ...

Because Enbridge needs access to land protected by treaties in order to complete construction, activists say the expansion also challenges longstanding agreements that ensure the right to hunt, fish, gather wild rice, and preserve cultural resources for Ojibwe people. “Our local state and federal governments are violating treaties by allowing this pipeline to go through,” said Nancy Beaulieu, an Ojibwe woman who co-founded the Rise coalition with Goodwin.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/20/line-3-pipeline-indigeno...

Canada also suffers from the climate change and health effect of gas flaring.

Canada has a serious methane problem. Newly published research, including infrared camera footage, commissioned by the Alberta Energy Regulator and undertaken by Alberta-based energy services company GreenPath shows that methane emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector — due to both venting of methane as part of normal operations, and equipment leaks — are higher than previously thought.

Key Issues:
Methane Emissions From Oil and Gas Operations

1.  The oil and gas industry is underreporting methane emissions in Alberta. The GreenPath study found signi cantly more pneumatic devices present than currently reported. (These are pumps
   and controllers that control the ow or pressure of the hydrocarbons in the system.) Using this correct gure for the number of devices, the actual emissions at oil and gas facilities from pneumatic devices are 60 per cent higher than estimates used to compile Canada’s GHG inventory. To put this is in perspective, these devices alone have the same short-term climate impact as 9 million cars.

2.  Equipment is routinely malfunctioning and leaking methane, and industry is venting methane— simply releasing it to the atmosphere — when it could be capturing it or using equipment that
   does not vent at all. The GreenPath data is clear that there is a problem and industry needs to start nding and xing these leaks. On average, there is almost one piece of equipment leaking or venting methane at each well (with greater methane emissions at oil well sites compared to natural gas wells). This shows there are more emissions than industry acknowledges. Worryingly, some of these oil facilities are excluded from the potential federal methane regulations.

3.  Industry is not currently required tol ook for methane leaks to see if they have a problem.  

4. Leak detection and repair (LDAR) should be done on a quarterly basis to ensure proper leak detection.

5.   Video footage shows that methane is also leaking from oil tanks found at wellheads. Some of these leaks are because of bad tank design, while other emissions are due to common industry practices, such as routing methane gas to oil tanks where it is allowed to escape out the top of the tank.

6.   Methaneemissionsprovideoneofthelowest-costemissionreductionopportunitiesavailable in Canada. Research in other jurisdictions shows that plugging methane leaks and upgrading equipment can result in increased pro ts through the capture of methane for use or sale.

7.   New access to information request show that as methane continues to leak from oil and gas facilities, the oil and gas industry is lobbying against proposed regulations that would reduce those emissions.

https://environmentaldefence.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/17-72_Methane...

A 2020 study by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) also urged an eventual phasing out of all existing such developments because it linked fracked natural gas to cancer and birth defects. 

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In a new report released January 29, a group of Canadian doctors has called for a national moratorium on all new fracking operations.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) also urged an eventual phasing out of all existing such developments.

In the report, titled Fractures in the Bridge: Unconventional (Fracked) Natural Gas, Climate Change and Human Health, environmental and health hazards associated with fracking are examined.

Fracking releases trapped natural gas deep beneath the Earth's surface by blasting water, toxic chemicals, and sand at high pressure through drilled horizontal wells to fracture rock that is enclosing gas reserves. ...

Among the "frightening health impacts" associated with fracking that were mentioned in a January 29 news release issued the same time as the report are "adverse reproductive outcomes, low birth weight, birth defects, and leukemia in children exposed in utero". The release of toxic chemicals into water and air and a fracking-related increase in earthquakes also received mention....

“Many adverse health effects have been identified in studies directed at fracking operations, but the strongest evidence is for negative impacts on pregnancy and birth outcomes and the aggravation of asthma,” Notebaert added. “The evidence for low birth weight is quite strong, which is disturbing, as low birth weight is an indicator for a number of serious health impacts, including developmental deficits in children and increased rates of cardiovascular disease in later life. There is also reason to believe that fracking increases the risk of leukemia among children whose mothers are exposed during pregnancy.”

One of the most dire prospects for the environment concerns the leakage of methane from fracking operations. As a climate-warming greenhouse gas, methane is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, which is often portrayed as the chief villain in human-caused global warming and climate change.

Methane comprises almost 100 percent of natural gas.

During the past decade around the world, about two-thirds of the natural gas produced has come from so-called shale gas that has been fracked in Canada and the U.S.; more than 70 percent of the gas produced in Canada comes from fracking sites. Most of those developments are in northeast B.C.

CAPE board member and Vancouver family physician Dr. Larry Barzelai addressed those climate concerns in the January 29 release: “Fracking for natural gas in B.C. is catastrophic news for climate change. Global methane levels have been steadily escalating over the last decade and new evidence points the finger at fracking.”

CAPE executive director Robin Edger urged the federal government to abolish fracking in Canada: "Natural gas is a fossil fuel that is feeding the climate crisis, compromising our ability to meet our commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement, and threatening our ability to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change,” he said. “Fracking threatens our health and is contributing to climate change. The only responsible step for government is to ban it outright.”

The release noted that five Canadian provinces and six U.S. states have declared moratoriums on fracking natural gas, not to mention European countries such as Bulgaria, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales. Uruguay has also adopted a moratorium.

https://www.straight.com/news/1354116/canadian-doctors-link-fracked-natu...

Edzell wrote:

There are a couple of relevant items on the Tyee today; one on govt failure to include CO2 emissions due to forest burning - they're huge - and one on the possible demise of the LNG industry.

Aside from LNG's  emissions, an accident with it could be, and likely would be, an enormous disaster.

 

Thanks for the post Edzell. Here's the article on LNG being an economic loser. 

Facing a world of challenges: Artist’s rendition of the sole LNG project under construction in BC, the LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat. Image via Fluor.

LNG terminals are among the largest capital projects attempted in modern industry, costing up to $30 billion per project. Gas is extracted from underground deposits, piped to LNG plants where it is compressed by cooling to liquid form, loaded onto ships and transported to other markets. 

“The sheer size of the projects has exposed investors to catastrophic losses,” said Lydia Plante, lead author of the just-released report.  The survey found that planned projects representing 38 per cent of global export capacity are facing delayed final investment decisions and other serious holdups. Cost overruns are common....

Canadian LNG is particularly bad off, Ted Nace, executive director of the Global Energy Monitor, told The Tyee. “The problem with the Canadian LNG expansion is that it’s especially vulnerable because Canada is a high-cost producer on a world basis.” That’s because Canada plans to produce its LNG from fracking — an energy and capital-intensive process to access gas hidden deep inside shale rock. 

Canadian LNG comes up short on the global market, said Nace, particularly when it competes against countries where conventional gas sources make LNG cheaper to produce.  And global competition is only getting fiercer. Qatar and Russia, for example, have vast supplies of cheap natural gas. “These super low cost producers,” said Nace, “are not giving up market share without a fight.” ...

The industry had its biggest growth year in 2019, with a record number of projects getting greenlit. At the end of 2019, companies realized they had overshot, and the LNG market plunged. Then the COVID-19 pandemic came along and made everything worse, said Nace.

Meanwhile, gas prices have swung widely, which further increased the risk for projects. Nace said the pinch on LNG will get stronger as renewables prices drop. ... A recent analysis projected cost for renewable energy would fall by around half between 2019 and 2030.

Meanwhile, the oft-cited argument that LNG provides a “transition fuel” is on shaky ground. This year, the International Energy Agency announced that no new gas fields are needed if the global economy is to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The problems besetting the global LNG market have big implications for B.C. Back in 2013, the BC Liberal Party pledged that LNG would create $1 trillion in economic activity for the province. But that dream never materialized. 

Since 2014, seven of 12 LNG projects proposed for Canada’s west coast have been cancelled. Of the projects remaining, only LNG Canada is currently under construction. LNG Canada —the biggest private sector investment in Canada’s history — has been beset by delays and cost overruns, and recently announced its finish date was pushed back to 2025. The Coastal GasLink pipeline being built to supply it with gas has been the site of fierce ongoing resistance from the Wet’suwet’en whose traditional territory would be impacted. ... Other projects like Woodfibre LNG are struggling to find financing.

A 2019 report from the Queensland University of Technology found that the LNG sector is infamous for “cost blowouts,” and only 10 per cent of projects come through under budget.  Yet efforts to establish an LNG industry in Canada have received billions in subsidies from provincial and federal governments.

Goldboro LNG, Canada’s first east coast LNG export terminal planned for Nova Scotia, needs to demonstrate its funding by June 30 to reach a final investment decision. It’s asking for nearly $1 billion from the federal government to go ahead. 

Nace sees a pattern: “I think that the tendency in Canada increasingly has been: project gets delayed; project gets opposition; then project starts to get in trouble and private investors start to move out; and then the government sector moves in.” His view: “I think the public should really keep an eye on not letting the government go down that road again.”

https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/06/24/BC-Looks-Like-LNG-Loser/

Wind and solar are already beating coal on price. Meanwhile the Trudeau Liberals keep subsidizing the Trans Mountain , Line 3, Line 5, and Keystone (until blocked by Biden) pipelines, as well as offshore oil development in Newfoundland and offshore gas development in Nova Scotia. 

A solar power plant in Gujarat, India. Renewable energy in the country would be cheaper than between 87% and 91% of new coal plants, the report says. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters

Almost two-thirds of wind and solar projects built globally last year will be able to generate cheaper electricity than even the world’s cheapest new coal plants, according to a report from the International Renewable EnergyAgency (Irena).

The agency found that the falling cost of new windfarms and solar panels meant 62% of new renewable energy projects could undercut the cost of up to 800 gigawatts (GW) worth of coal plants, or almost enough to supply the UK’s electricity needs 10 times over.

Solar power costs fell by 16% last year, according to the report, while the cost of onshore wind dropped 13% and offshore wind by 9%. In less than a decade the cost of large-scale solar power has fallen by more than 85% while onshore wind has fallen almost 56% and offshore wind has declined by almost 48%. Francesco La Camera, Irena’s director general, said the agency’s latest research proved the world was “far beyond the tipping point of coal”.

He said: “Today renewables are the cheapest source of power. Renewables present countries tied to coal with an economically attractive phase-out agenda that ensures they meet growing energy demand, while saving costs, adding jobs, boosting growth and meeting climate ambition.”

In Europe, the cost of a new coal plant would be well above the cost of new wind and solar farms including mandatory carbon prices. The report found that in the US renewable energy could undercut between three-quarters and 91% of existing coal-fired power plants, while in India renewable energy would be cheaper than between 87% and 91% of new coal plants. ...

Replacing hundreds of existing coal plants with unsubsidised renewable energy sources could save $32.3bn (£22.8bn) every year in energy system costs and avoid about 3 gigatonnes of CO2 annually, the report said.

The carbon saving from phasing out 800GW of coal power capacity would be the equivalent of shaving 9% from the world’s energy-related emissions last year, according to the report, or 20% of the carbon savings needed by 2030 to help limit global heating to 1.5Cabove pre-industrial levels.

The report predicts the cost of renewable energy will continue to fall in the coming years. Over the next two years three-quarters of all new solar power projects will be cheaper than new coal power plants, and onshore wind costs will be a quarter lower than the cheapest new coal-fired option.

“The trend confirms that low-cost renewables are not only the backbone of the electricity system, but that they will also enable electrification in end uses like transport, buildings and industry and unlock competitive indirect electrification with renewable hydrogen,” the report said.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/23/most-new-wind-solar-...